The family had a very nice home and yard. I asked to see the lawn mower as I had never seen anyone cutting their grass in Japan. I thought they had some kind of grass that didn't grow and I could never find out the answer. Anyway, they do cut their grass.








Their yard was very well maintained.














There are some fall colors but a lot of green leaves yet.

This is the tatami room where we slept for the night. It shows some of the furniture and the shrine on the left.

The pictures on the wall are Mika's grandparents. The shrine is for them....it has fresh flowers and incense burning and sometimes fresh food for the souls of the deceased to make them happy.














Again we slept on futons but this time we had 2 futons and this made the bed much softer and we had a comfortable sleep. You leave your slippers outside the tatami room. Tatami is considered very special to the Japanese. We watch Japanese travel shows....we can't understand the words but sometimes you cna still understand....like, when they enter their accomodations and find tatami on the floors...many oooh's and ahhh's and great excitement.










The tatami room was separated from the rest of the house with sliding doors. The panes are made from paper.

When Amber first moved to Japan 5 years ago, she stayed with this family for 10 days and they have been friends ever since. We stayed one night at their place. They have a big home so they could easily accommodate all of us. He has a construction company and has 150 men working for him. They can speak some English but their daughter, who you see in the picture, is fluent in English. Again they served up a big meal that lasted 2-3 hours. The two main dishes you see on the table are "oden" a type of soup that contains fish , vegetables and other things, and "sukiyaki" which was a delicious beef dish. We were well treated and well fed. The family was very laid back and easy to visit with.


Amber, Mika, and Rebecca. Mika is the daughter and Amber attended her wedding as one of the family.











Before dinner, we enjoyed some green tea, which most Japanese drink every day. Only Jim and I were given green tea though. It is an honour to be given this special green te,especially the first time you are at someone's home.Five years ago the mother,Yurika, couldn't speak any English but she has been studying for the last 5 years and now has a some of the English language, enough that we could communicate a little. She wanted to learn so that she could speak with Amber.

The girls took us on a tour of this castle which was built in 1612. It was actually burned down during the war so this is the rebuilt version. It is more of a museum now.

The fall colors are just happening now. Also you can notice Colleen's new fall color, she actually got up nerve to go to a Japanese hairdresser who pretended he would do what she wanted. He actually cut it a lot shorter and completely change the color. He told the lady next to Colleen that her hair was not good when she came into the shop but now it is much better. Anyway it turned out fine and you should still be able to recognize her when she returns.





We did some touring in Amber's part of Japan, they always have lots of parks to visit as the Japanese are big on nature.











Yes the flowers are still blooming here and it is nice sunny weather.

The girls apartment was on the second floor and these were the steps leading up to it. We were headed out to go to visit friends of the girls.















Picture from the loft, a family experience that we never thought we would have on the other side of the world from Canada.












Notice the height of the doorway, it is good the girls aren't tall.

This is inside Amber and Rebecca's apartment and they are in their living room sitting at their table. As you can see there are no chairs in this apartment. This was also our bedroom for two nights. Have you ever tried sleeping on a futon on the floor, there is not much padding there but we did survive.






This is a picture taken from their loft and that is a different setup than our own apartment.














Amber and Rebecca slept in the loft. We opted for the main floor as their ladder looked to dangerous to climb.

While we were waiting for Amber to get off work we spent some time at the Nagoya train station. A lot of place are decorated for Christmas and in many of the stores, Christmas carols are being played, and in English. It helped us get into the season.









These were huge artificial trees in front of the station. Only 1% of Japan is Christian but most of them enjoy the Christmas festivities even it they don't celebrate the birth.











The stores have many decorations on the inside as well and we really enjoy them. All the flower shops sell poinsettas as well.

On Friday Nov. 18th we boarded the Shinkansen or bullet train for Nagoya to visit Amber and Rebecca. We were also going to visit friends of hers and it is customary in Japan to always bring a gift. We bought Tokyo Banana to take with us which is a famous desert from that city.









The Shinkansen is very comfortable with lots of legroom. It travels over 180 km/hr and is an extremely smooth ride as they have welded all the joins in the track. It took less than 2 hour, a normal train would take 6-7 hours. Of course we had to pay for that fast ride but it was worth it.

This is a family we met from our neighborhood where we live and they had us over for dinner on Nov. 26th. With the Japanese, you don't have a meal, you have a dining experience. The meal lasted about two and one-half hours. The lady of the house is so busy that we didn't see much of her. I think we had about 10 different dishes and she kept bringing out new ones during the meal time. They really treated us well and we had a fun time trying to communicate. We both had our dictionaries out and it is amazing how much we could actually communicate. It was a fun time.

We are always trying new foods and new restaurnants in Japan. This dish in called"nabe" and is cooked at the table. It is kind of like a soup but has the entire meal in it. It was very delicious and filling.

We went to the festival at the university that we taught at first term and this was a cake that was on display there. The entire cake is edible and has incredible detail.












We met with several of our students and had coffee and desert with the 4 shown in the picture. It was great to see them again and catch up on the news.

Saturday, while we were speaking with Shannon and my Mom on the phone outside our apt. as this is the only place that brings in even half decent reception, the lady on the right stopped and spoke in Japanese with Jim. He was only able to respond with English. She understood him to say Canada and she was off, excitedly trying to communicate something in Japanese with words like Los Angeles, Minneapolis and holding up fingers for numbers.

The outcome was that she motioned for us to follow her. Jim ran in to get his shoes. I had just had a shower...no make-up and my hair was not even dry....!!!But we followed her as we didn't know how to tell her to wait a few minutes. It turned out that she was taking us to her house for coffee!!! She immediately called her daughter on the phone. This daughter now lives in Tokyo and speaks English well as she had lived in LA and Minn. The lady handed the phone to Jim to talk with her. Meanwhile she is showing me photo albums of her family etc. What a great blessing!!
We generally feel 'invisible'in Japan even though we know we are just the opposite. Usually no one speaks to us so this was a very amazing experience for us. The other person in the picture is this lady's daughter-inlaw who lives in the same house. She speaks limited English. By the way, I had my hair cut and dyed the next day ...another story....so it looks much better now!!















This was taken from the 2nd floor at Ueno Station. Notice the mass of people on the floor below rushing for their connecting trains. The empty space is the area just this side of the ticket gates and it will soon be filled with all the people who headed through the gates. Finding your way in one of these stations is quite the experience. And crossing 'traffic' is an art.











We went to Tokyo Station as there is bookstore with and English section near there...after Saturday we decided to get serious about learning Japanese ...we want to be able to communicate with our new friendly neighbour...
The older buildings are the station....all that was left after the 'fire-bombings' of WW2. The Allies targeted the station and the trains as this crippled the nation as there road system is not nearly as efficient. The inside of the buildings is new construction.

We walk past these oranges everyday on our way to the train....very difficult to walk past as they look delicious. These are quite large Christmas style Japanese oranges...notice the pen on the top if one to show the size. I wanted to put my hand there but Jim insisted that a pen would make more sense?!















More oranges, in clumps. Very tempting. We can buy bags of these for very cheap...the smaller the size of the orange the less they charge per kilogram...so we just eat more small oranges...they taste just as good. Last time we were able to get a bag of about 20 oranges for about $3.oo Cdn.


























Morning glories! All the flower pictures and comments are mine, But I noticed Jim commenting on the flowers that we saw while out walking on Saturday...I think he is more interested that he lets on.








Another Mum plant....yes, only one plant and one main stem....has to be grafted somewhere for the colour changes. Each stem is attached to a wire and trained into this form. Amazing! Each stem is about 2 feet long. Difficult to describe but it was impressive.

More beautiful flowers. Notice the tree in the background. It has the same berries as a previous picture...much like Mountain Ash....loaded with berries.


















Same as above!










This is ONE chrysanthemum plant, trained on a wire form to grow like this. The blooms stretch about 4 feet across and about 6 feet in length. This was the first time we saw this done, but we have seen several examples since.

Another example of the various plants and shrubs here. I have been looking for a book with the names of trees and plants but to no avail. We were at a bookstore that has an English section in Tokyo on Saturday but it had nothing. These are much like our mountain ash berries but very different foliage.














Another pretty plant, in fact we had the same plant in our store, only ours was artificial.
This plant has tiny purple berries, and there are others that have white berries.















A garden that we pass on the way to the trains. This one has deep trenches between the onion rows and the trench has charcoal briquettes all down the row. These gardens have many vegetables that are just coming up so I guess they aren't expecting snow anytime soon.

We met a family on the way to some celebration and we asked them if we could take a picture. They get dressed up like this for many cultural events.













This little bake shop is very handy, right by our bus stop on the way home from work. The baking and coffee are both great here. Colleen is taking part in our favorite passtime in Japan.

The signs usually have all 3 types of script, Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji. It is hard to imagine what is being advertised here but this is what we face every day.












I am attempting to learn more Japanese than I did on my first trip. I'm afraid I have to report that my progress is very slow. Perhaps I can indicate to you just what a phenomenal task it is. In the English language we have 26 letters to learn and the combinations of sounds they make. In Japanese there is a Hiragana alphabet that consists of 110 symbols in a curvalinear style. This is their phonetic vocabulary and other than the 5 vowels, the rest of the symbols consist of 2-3 letters each. They also have a Katakana alphabet which is a second phonetic vocabulary and it also consists of 110 symbols, most of which are quite different from the Hiragana alphabet and are made up of straight lines. This alphabet has been designed primarily for foreign names and place names and words of foreign origin. Then there is the Kanji alphabet consisting of Chinese characters each conveying an idea, most of which have at least two readings of meanings. By the way, there are 8000-10000 Kanji characters. Most university students only know 2000 of these and so they even find their own language difficult.
Now, if that isn't enough to tax a foreigner, their number system differs depending upon what you are counting. For example:
the number 1 is "ichi", if you order 1 thing at a restaurant it as "hitotsu", 1 minute is "ippun", 1 week is "isshukan", 1 month is "ikkagetsu". Do you notice a pattern? That's right, THERE IS NONE and this is only a sample of their number system. Some numbers like 4, 7, and 9 have 2 words for each number and I haven't quite figured out when you use each one.
Also the verbs come at the end of the sentence so if you say, "Where is the station?", it is literally translated, "The station where is?"
I have the book, "Japanese For Busy People" and it helps if I have time to dedicate to it. And then there is the matter of proper pronunciation. On Halloween I gave the cleaning ladies, at the university, some candy. They said "thank you" in English and I said "you're welcome" in Japanese. They corrected my pronunciation so you know your pronunciation is bad when the cleaning ladies are correcting you.
My goal this session is to memorize the Hiragana alphabet. So far, I know 30-40 symbols fairly well so I have a long way to go and only 6 weeks left until I return to Canada. Needless to say, I won't be returning fluent in Japanese. Jo and Derek are lucky, Spanish is much easier. Bye for now. Jim

Some things around the world are universal.













Would you believe that these are two of the teachers we teach with here in Japan. One is a mighty Samuri and the other one has a bit more horse sense. I guess everyone has a different way of handling stress!!!












One of our collegues in the teachers' room.

Blooms in November. These are on trees at our university. We have seen many gardens where new plants have recently been put into the ground.











These are Japan's version of Atco trailers. These are self-contained offices and they stack them to save space.














Notice the lace seat covers in the taxi. Note also that the taxi driver has had a very hard day.













This bakery is right at the train station at the university and is much too handy. We sometimes stop here when we are hungry after work, it is an excellent bakery and the coffee is good also. If you get the impression that we eat out a lot, you are correct. Usually we don't have the energy to make our own meals and the food is very good here.